Scrubbing and Seeking
- Peter 18Jun15: I fixed the scroll seeking - your ednote of yesterday Paul was a duplication of this. I really do not want to clutter this page with images of the numbers which I feel are unnecessary, I feel the text is perfectly clear and sufficient. I am the "do-er" here, this is my decision.
- Gale 29Jun15: Notwithstanding, I think a couple of images would break up the "sea of text" and make a more attractive page.
- Peter 29Jun15: But in the absence of any real visual cues to indicate that scrubbing is on and active there's not very much to show. It looks pretty much like normal playing unless you are in double-click scrub, or in single-click scrub and rotate the mouse-wheel and then you do get the speed indicators.
And it's hardly a "sea of text", it's a fairly short page and the concepts are fairly simple (even if the UI is more complex than it might be).
- Gale 29Jun15: I think Paul's point is about images showing the numbers on screen.
- Peter 29Jun15: But in the absence of any real visual cues to indicate that scrubbing is on and active there's not very much to show. It looks pretty much like normal playing unless you are in double-click scrub, or in single-click scrub and rotate the mouse-wheel and then you do get the speed indicators.
Once you have placed Audacity in scrub play mode it will remain in that mode until you Stop 
(or use a shortcut to stop) which would then allow you to restart in normal play mode.
The term "Scrubbing" comes from the early days of the recording industry and refers to the process of physically rotating tape reels to move the tape past the play-head to locate a specific point in the audio track.
Scrubbing
- Peter 18Jun15: I really do not want to clutter this page with images of the numbers which I feel are unnecessary.
Scrubbing can only be started when in Selection Tool 
. Changing to another tool after starting scrubbing will perform a Stop.
Pressing CTRL + left-click will put you into scrub play mode. You can now release the mouse button then move the pointer right and left across the waveform. This will cause Audacity to scrub play forward or backward from the point at which you clicked in the waveform. Nothing will happen until you move the mouse pointer. Scrub play will temporarily stop when the green playback cursor 
(the "play-head") catches up with the mouse pointer but will restart again as soon as you move the mouse left or right.
The speed of the scrub play can be controlled by rotating the mouse wheel (if your mouse is so equipped). Each four steps of the rotated mouse wheel doubles, or halves, the speed - which is equivalent to one octave. The scrub speed will be shown temporarily, in yellow-ochre, superimposed on the waveform display when you change it with mouse wheel.
It is possible to zoom while you are scrubbing by holding the CTRL key down and rotating the mouse wheel.
Clicking the Stop button (or its shortcut Space) at any time will stop scrub play and return you to normal play mode. Note that at this point the editing cursor will be at the position is was when scrubbing was started. If you stop scrubbing when the green playback cursor is over the mouse pointer then the scrubbing position can be marked with a left-click mouse gesture which moves the cursor to that position; you may then use CTRL + B to create a marker label at that point.
You can invoke scrub play while audio is playing normally and it will abandon the playback to perform the scrub play. You cannot invoke scrub play while you are recording or paused in recording mode.
Seeking
If you hold the left mouse button down as you scrub the scrubbing will change to seeking.
In seek mode many small slices of the audio are played at normal speed and always something very close to the mouse pointer enabling you to move across the audio rapidly. This is similar to using the seek button on a CD player.
Releasing the left mouse while you are seeking will return you to scrub play and pressing it again will return you to seek play enabling you to repeatedly press and release the left mouse button to switch between seeking and scrubbing.
Note that a simple left-click anywhere in the waveform while in scrubbing mode will immediately seek to that position, then re-enter scrubbing mode.
Scroll-scrub
- Peter 18Jun15: I have added scroll-seeking. But as above I really do not want the clutter here of an image with numbers.
If you CTRL + double-left-click then move the mouse pointer to scrub, the green play cursor (effectively the "play-head") remains at the mid-position of the waveform display and the speed of scrubbing can be varied much more smoothly by the position of the mouse pointer. In this mode the mouse pointer position does not determine the target of the scrub rather it determines the speed of the scrub, the further away from the play cursor (in either direction) the faster the speed of the scrub. The scrub speed will be shown, in green, superimposed on the waveform display as you move the pointer with the mouse.
The speed of the Scroll-scrub play can also be controlled by rotating the mouse wheel (if your mouse is so equipped). The Scroll-scrub speed will be shown, in green, superimposed on the waveform display when you change it with mouse wheel.
In reverse scroll-scrub as play approaches the left-most portion of the audio the green "play-head" cursor will move to the left until it reaches zero and stops. If you have turned on "Enable Scrolling left of zero" in Tracks Preferences then the "play-head" cursor will remain centered as you approach the leftmost portion of the audio.
Scroll-seeking
If you hold the left mouse button down as you scroll-scrub the scroll-scrubbing will change to scroll-seeking.
Releasing the left mouse while you are scrub-seeking will return you to scroll-scrub play and pressing it again will return you to scroll-seek play enabling you to repeatedly press and release the left mouse button to switch between scroll-seeking and scroll-scrubbing.
